Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Climate Change and Water (Senator Wong) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to renewable energy targets.

This is a critical issue for now. This cannot wait to be addressed by COAG later this year. I note that the Minister for Climate Change and Water has been saying that the Council of Australian Governments will complete a review into the role of these energy efficiency technologies in the renewable energy target in December. That is too late because, as a result of the government’s complete failure to manage the renewable energy target and to design it in an appropriate way, we have got a situation where the renewable energy certificate price has collapsed. We have got 150 jobs on the line right now with Keppel Prince Engineering and we have got $20 billion worth of investment in commercial scale renewable energy projects at risk. Dare I say that, if this were 150 workers in a coalmine or in a coal fired power station or $20 billion worth of investment in coal at risk, there would be emergency meetings all over the place, but this is renewable energy and this is the problem we have right now.

When the renewable energy target was debated in the Senate I pointed out to the minister that the target would be crowded out because of renewable energy certificates coming in from solar hot water and heat pumps and by the multiplier for the small scale photovoltaics. Clearly, the way to fix the problem was to add them onto the top of the target or create a national energy efficiency target and a parallel mechanism. But they should not be left in the target because there is no room for expanded renewable energy in the way that it has been designed. To add insult to injury, and without thinking about the consequences of what they were doing, in the stimulus package the government went out with its $1,600 rebate for solar hot water and that has increased the uptake, increased the RECs, flooded the market and now we have a collapse in the price.

This will not wait. The minister must do something about it now. It is not much good, I have to say, for the opposition spokesperson, Mr Hunt, to come out saying he is prepared to work with people to fix the problem. So he should, because the coalition voted down the Greens amendment that would have fixed this at the time we debated the renewable energy target. It was disingenuous today to hear the minister say that it was the modelling that was wrong, not her. When I asked her the question in here about exactly what percentage solar hot water and heat pumps would take in the renewable energy target she came back and said, ‘The modelling indicated five per cent; in other words, five per cent.’ She has been absolutely wrong because we have now got a situation where it is roughly 50 per cent of the overall target. As a result of this oversupply of renewable energy certificates, we now have this collapse and the threat to jobs and investment. It cannot wait.

We need to get the legislation back in here. We need the government to come back in here with an amendment to the legislation. Given that the coalition has now said it might reconsider its position on this, surely we can sort this out before we leave here so that we can guarantee the jobs and the investment in renewable energy. It is not good enough to palm this off to COAG. we know the minister is going to be in Copenhagen in December and everyone is going to be distracted in December. If COAG brings a report down in December, it will be the lowest common denominator anyway because it always is. If you want to bury an issue, send it to COAG. What we need now is action from the minister. It is clear that she has no intention of (a) admitting she got it completely wrong and (b) going to back to the department and asking, ‘How could you have presented me with such a ridiculous modelling figure of five per cent when the answer is now 50 per cent, and what are you going to do about it?’ I put to the government: what are you going to do about it? There will be a motion in here later this afternoon to call on the government to reintroduce this so that we can fix it. If it is not fixed, then I can only assume the majority of people in this place want to see the renewable energy industry lose jobs, go overseas with their technologies and lose investment. That is a disgrace in a country where we are talking about nation building, innovation and building capacity in manufacturing.

Question agreed to.